Freedom Daily Archive

Funding Leviathan, Part 2

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 When the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, broached the idea of a consumption tax to replace all or part of the income tax in his testimony before the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, he was not alone. There are three other voices that have of late been promoting a consumption ...

Nanny-State Quandary

by Scott McPherson April 1, 2007

Paternalistic agitators must be in a real quandary. A Massachusetts man is suing his former employer for firing him for smoking. The man lost his job as a lawn-care specialist after testing positive for nicotine. Isn’t this great? After all, anti-smoking types have been haranguing us for years about the dangers ...

The Slippery Slope of Nanny-State Politics

by Jeffrey A. Singer April 1, 2007

On December 5, 2006, the City of New York banned the use of transfats in restaurants and food preparation. Ironically, many of the experts proclaiming the dangers of transfats were the ones who urged us to embrace them as “heart-healthy” in the 1980s. William Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at Harvard University, who was one of the ...

Liberty versus the Morality Police

by George Leef April 1, 2007

Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality by Elizabeth Price Foley (Yale University Press, 2006); 287 pages, $35.00. Most Americans have settled somnolently into the view that whatever laws are passed are all right because they’re the product of democracy. To be sure, there ...

Why Germans Supported Hitler, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 It has long intrigued me why the German people supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. After all, every schoolchild in America is taught that Hitler and his Nazi cohorts were the very epitome of evil. How could ordinary German citizens support people who were so obviously monstrous in nature? Standing against the Nazi ...

The Flimflam of Income-Tax Denial

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2007

My recent three-part series in Freedom Daily, “Beware Income-Tax Casuistry” (August–October 2006), provoked some vigorous objection. Unsurprisingly, members of what is known as the tax-protester movement, but which should be called the tax-denial movement, took issue with every aspect of the articles — and more. The movement doesn’t merely object to the income tax on moral, or natural-rights, ...

Ford’s Legacy: Lawless Government

by James Bovard March 1, 2007

The death of former President Gerald Ford unleashed a tidal wave of bathos and political bunkum across the land. Ford was far more exalted in death than he had been during his time in office. Slate’s Timothy Noah critically noted, Within the narrow confines of Permanent Washington — the journalists, lobbyists, and congressional lifers who are the city’s avatars ...

An Open Letter to High-School Students: Pay Attention to Government

by Bart Frazier March 1, 2007

To every high-school student in this country between the ages of 15 and 18, this letter is to you. If there is ever something that you should take the time to learn about, it is government. Why? — you ask. If your idea of government is endless babbling by old congressional ...

Funding Leviathan, Part 1

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 The federal leviathan is fed by taxes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, during the federal government’s most recent fiscal year (FY 2006), which ended on September 30, 2006, total revenues were approximately $2.403 trillion. Most of this revenue was, of course, raised as a result of taxes confiscated from the American ...

Public-Access TV: Fascism in Action

by Scott McPherson March 1, 2007

Imagine a public-access aisle at your local grocery store. The store would provide the goods it can profit from on other aisles, but there would be a special aisle where certain merchandise would be offered because the local government required it to be offered. Local residents would go to city council meetings and produce petitions signed by their neighbors saying ...

The Active Authoritarianism of Teddy Roosevelt

by George Leef March 1, 2007

Bully Boy by Jim Powell (Crown Forum, 2006); 329 pages, $27.50. Most historians rank Teddy Roosevelt as one of America’s great or near-great presidents. That is mainly because he is regarded as a “progressive” — a trustbuster, a proponent of government regulation of the ...

Tyranny and the Military Commissions Act

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2007

In Star Wars, Episode 3, in response to the Senate’s grant of sweeping powers to Chancellor Palpatine, Padme declares, “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” The same may be said about the Military Commissions Act (MCA) that was recently enacted by Congress — that this is how freedom ends, with or without the applause. Despite the fact that the ...